CALCULATIONS OF NUCLEIC-ACID CONFORMATIONS

The present computational power and sophistication of theoretical appr oaches to nucleic acid structural investigation are sufficient for the realization of static and dynamic models that correlate accurately wi th current crystallographic, NMR and solution-probing structural data, and consequently are able to provide valuable insights and prediction s for a variety of nucleic acid conformational families, in molecular dynamics simulations, the year 1995 was marked by the foray of fast Ew ald methods, an accomplishment resulting from several years' work in t he search for an adequate treatment of the electrostatic long-range fo rces so primordial in nucleic acid behavior. In very large systems, an d particularly in the RNA-folding field, techniques originating from a rtificial intelligence research, like constraint satisfaction programm ing or genetic algorithms, have established their utility and potentia l.